A library catalog (or library catalogue) is a register of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations. A bibliographic item can be any information entity (e.g., books, computer files, graphics, realia, cartographic materials, etc.) that is considered library material (e.g., a single novel in an anthology), or a group of library materials (e.g., a trilogy), or linked from the catalog (e.g., a webpage) as far as it is relevant to the catalog and to the users (patrons) of the library. (Excerpt from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog">Wikipedia article: Library catalogue</a>)

A CD-ROM (acronym of "Compact Disc Read-only memory") is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 'Yellow Book' standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data. CD-ROMs are popularly used to distribute computer software, including video games and multimedia applications, though any data can be stored (up to the capacity limit of a disc). Some CDs hold both computer data and audio with the latter capable of being played on a CD player, while data (such as software or digital video) is only usable on a computer (such as ISO 9660 format PC CD-ROMs). These are called enhanced CDs. (Excerpt from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-ROM">Wikipedia article: CD-ROM</a>)

Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) describes the content of art databases by articulating a conceptual framework for describing and accessing information about works of art, architecture, other material culture, groups and collections of works, and related images. The CDWA includes 512 categories and subcategories. A small subset of categories are considered core in that they represent the minimum information necessary to identify and describe a work. The CDWA includes discussions, basic guidelines for cataloging, and examples. (Excerpt from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categories_for_the_Description_of_Works_of_... article: CDWA</a>)

CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) emerged first as a simple standard not unlike a library catalogue card or the present DC (Dublin Core Metadata Standard) and was intended as a data exchange format. It was based on records describing projects, with persons and organisational units as attributes. However, it was soon realised that in practice this CERIF91 standard was inadequate: it was too rigid in format, did not handle repeating groups of information, was not multilingual / multi character set and did not represent in a sufficiently rich way the universe of interest. A new group of experts was convened and CERIF2000 was generated. Its essential features are: (a) it has the concept of objects or entities with attributes such as project, person, organisational unit; (b) it supports n:m relationships between them (and recursively on any of them) using 'linking relations' thus providing rich semantics including roles and time; (c) it is fully internationalised in language and character set; (d) it is extensible without prejudicing the core datamodel thus providing guaranteed interoperability at least at the core level but not precluding even richer intercommunication. It is designed for use both for data exchange (data file transfer) and for heterogeneous distributed query / result environments. With CERIF2004, minor improvements in consistency have been released. With CERIF2006 substantial improvements have been implemented with the model, concerning in particular the introduction of a so-called Semantic Layer, that makes the model flexible and scalable for application in very heterogeneous environments. (Excerpt from <a href="http://www.eurocris.org/Index.php?page=CERIFintroduction&t=1">this source</a>)

A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data (generally numbers and / or text) through telecommunication networks or storage of text in computers. (Excerpt from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_encoding">Wikipedia article: Character encoding</a>)

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on 2 September 2008, and the public stable release was on 11 December 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers. As of January 2011, Chrome was the third most widely used browser, and passed the 10% worldwide usage share of web browsers, according to Net Applications. In September 2008, Google released a large portion of Chrome's source code, including its V8 JavaScript engine, as an open source project entitled Chromium. This move enabled third-party developers to study the underlying source code and to help convert the browser to the Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. Google also expressed hope that other browsers would adopt V8 to improve web application performance. The Google-authored portion of Chromium is released under the permissive BSD license, which allows portions to be incorporated into both open source and closed source software programs. Other portions of the source code are subject to a variety of open source licenses. (Excerpt from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome">Wikipedia article: Chrome</a>)

The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) provides an extensible ontology for concepts and information in cultural heritage and museum documentation. It is the international standard (ISO 21127:2006) for the controlled exchange of cultural heritage information. Archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions are encouraged to use the CIDOC CRM to enhance accessibility to museum-related information and knowledge. (Excerpt from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIDOC-CRM">Wikipedia article: CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model</a>)

Cloud computing refers to the provision of computational resources on demand via a computer network. In the traditional model of computing, both data and software are fully contained on the user's computer; in cloud computing, the user's computer may contain almost no software or data (perhaps a minimal operating system and web browser only), serving as little more than a display terminal for processes occurring on a network of computers far away. A common shorthand for a provider's cloud computing service (or even an aggregation of all existing cloud services) is "The Cloud". (Excerpt from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing">Wikipedia article: Cloud computing</a>)

Cocoa is one of Apple Inc.'s native object-oriented application programming interfaces (APIs) for the Mac OS X operating system and - along with the Cocoa Touch extension for gesture recognition and animation - for applications of iOS on Apple's iPhone and iPad product lines. Cocoa applications are typically developed using the development tools provided by Apple, specifically Xcode (formerly Project Builder) and Interface Builder, using the Objective-C language. However, the Cocoa programming environment can be accessed using other tools, such as Clozure CL, LispWorks, Object Pascal, Python, Perl, Ruby, and AppleScript with the aid of bridging mechanisms such as PasCocoa, PyObjC, CamelBones and RubyCocoa. An implementation of the Ruby language, called MacRuby, which does away with the requirement for a bridging mechanism, is under development by Apple, while Nu is a Lisp-like language which can be used with Cocoa without a bridge. It is also possible to write Objective-C Cocoa programs in a simple text editor and build it manually with GCC or clang from the command line or from a makefile. (Excerpt from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_(API)">Wikipedia article: Cocoa</a>)

A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding and/or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of 'compressor-decompressor' or, more commonly, 'coder-decoder'. A codec (the program) should not be confused with a coding or compression format or standard - a format is a document (the standard), a way of storing data, while a codec is a program (an implementation) which can read or write such files. In practice "codec" is sometimes used loosely to refer to formats, however. (Excerpt from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec">Wikipedia article: codec</a>)